A wryly funny and deeply hopeful memoir about generational trauma, the stories we tell ourselves to survive, and what it takes to become someone different than the people who raised us.

Laura Quick was born outside of Savannah, Georgia, where centuries-old oaks draped in Spanish moss stand watch and history lingers on every cobblestone street. But instead of an antebellum mansion, Laura came home to a single-wide trailer, the daughter of a seventeen-year-old mother who would soon leave her behind, sign away custody, and start a new life.

Some people inherit their grandmother’s china. Laura inherited a mother who drifted in and out of her life, leaving her caught between the thrill of finally being chosen and the shame of never being enough to make her stay. The highs looked like joyrides with the windows down, Prince’s Kiss on the radio, and marsh air whipping through their hair. The lows looked like her own mother becoming the first person to offer her drugs before she made it to middle school. Laura inherited generational trauma, a family full of secrets, and an alarming ability to mistake survival for healing.

With equal parts wit and vulnerability, Laura gives voice to the stories families learn to whisper, writing about addiction, abuse, poverty, shame, faith, and generational trauma. She recounts the marriages she was certain would fix her, the spectacularly bad decisions she somehow survived, the motherhood she was terrified she’d get wrong, and the long, messy work of becoming someone different than the people who raised her.

Heartbreaking, hilarious, and deeply hopeful, Mommy Issues explores the complicated and often painful dynamics of family, the stories we tell ourselves to survive, and what it takes to break the patterns we inherit. Because while our past may explain us, it never gets to define us.